Re: Reflections on Nicholas II - His Character Traits Good and Bad #2

[Belochka]

How Nikolai presented himself and acted in his daily life, and the outstanding way he demonstrated a balanced calm attitude whilst he remained a political prisoner, clearly highlighted his immense strength of character, which was guided by his profound spiritual connection with God whom he adored.  

Few western historians could understand this intense personal aspect on the Emperor. In fact that spriritual trait was used against him in negative terms, either because of the author's ignorance of Russian Orthodox custom and/or because there was a political agenda to paint Nikolai's personality in less than favorable terms .

[Romanov_fan]

You are quite right about fatalism and realism, that's a very relevant point to make. Also, I very much enjoyed the last post, that is very true. Thanks to everybody who responded. You have great insights!

[lovy]

Did Nicky drink much? Didn't he once drink so much that all these other officers had to carry him back to the palace or something like that?
I read something like that in Greg King's 'The Last Empress'. And then he later met "Little K.".

[Romanov_fan]

He was a moderate drinker in later life. Not more than what any reasonable person would consider normal. As for his youth, he may have drank more then, but he was never anything but normal in this too. That was common in regiments back then. Many young people today drink in this way, although they might not in later life. He was never alcoholic, or really more than normal. This wasn't an issue in his life.

[ordino]

Nicholas II was a patriot , he abdicated for his country and for his people. He loved his country and he did what he thougt was the best for Russia. It was not his fault to be educated like an autocrat. H
Ordino

[Tania]

Ordino,

Bravo ! Well stated. There by the way is nothing wrong with your english. Thanks for you input.

Tatiana+

Nicholas II was a patriot , he abdicated for his country and for his people. He loved his country and he did what he thougt was the best for Russia. It was not his fault to be educated like an autocrat. H
Ordino

[Tsarfan]

Hi Rich,

Your insight is great in regards to his IH Nicholas. I always look forward to your postings. Your care to offer that which is not much regarded, shines again in terms of where to focus in terms of positive attributes. Thank you for your fairness, and in thinking, where some think not, and just express to express...

Best Regards,

Tatiana

I've always admired Nicholas' behavior during his captivity which, in the words of one scholar, "he bore with bravery and fortitude."  That took guts and I admire that.

I wish there could be an authoritative reading list posted on this site for those who wish to learn more about Russian history.  Perhaps then we wouldn't have so many posts condemning Nicholas for sticking so tenaciously to the autocratic system and fighting the Duma.  Certainly reforms were needed, but not necessarily the one's that are frequently mentioned on this forum.  

Instituting a democratic government would not have solved everything overnight.  Alexandra wrote that the Russian people were not ready for democracy, and she was right.  Indeed, most of Nicholas' best ministers, such was Sergius Witte, were staunch supporters of the imperial system.  The same is true of Stolypin, Pobedenotsev, etc.  These people were Russia's greatest minds.  They knew what they were talking about.  

Throughout Nicholas' reign, few people thought the system of government was the problem.  Rather they thought the Tsar himself, and later the Tsarina, were the problem.  So, in my opinion, statements deploring Nicholas' failure to "institute democratic reforms" betray a certain ignorance of what was happening in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Rich, I cannot find your original quote, so perhaps I'm missing some context here.  But wasn't the Revolution of 1905, which manifested a serious desire for "democratic reforms", also part of what was happening in Russia in the late 19th and early 20th centuries?  As far as I'm aware, the point of that Revolution was to reform the system, not to swap the tsar for another autocrat.  And didn't Witte, in particular, see a need to accommodate that desire for reforms to some degree?

I agree that Witte and Stolypin and others staunchly supported the imperial system.  But then again, Karl Rove is a very bright man who staunchly supports the use of wedge issues to drive U.S. democracy toward embattled ideological camps instead of toward the art of compromise, which had once been the key strength of the U.S. system.  Bright men are not always right, and they do not always act in the best interests of their countries.

[Tania]

Oh boy, very glad for small silver lingings, especially in that Karl Rove is off topic !  

Hugs FA !


Tatiana+

[Caleb]

I think that Nicholas's most positive attributes are: his Christian faith, his kind nature & his devotion to his wife & family

[Tsarfan]

Oh boy, very glad for small silver lingings, especially in that Karl Rove is off topic !  

Fair enough . . . the Karl Rove remark was somewhat spurious.  I just think part of the fun of history is to look at how certain traits carry across historical figures throughout the ages and pop up in different contexts.

But the essence of my post was that Rich's post, if I understood it correctly, seemed to suggest that talk about democratic reforms is a late 20th- / early 21st-century notion that is improperly applied in hindsight to Nicholas' reign.  My point was that in Russia and during Nicholas' reign enough of his contemporary Russians were talking about democratic reforms to mount a serious revolution that almost toppled the throne.  So I do not see the anachronism in examining Nicholas' actions in the context of demands for democratic reforms.

Since I find Rich extremely well-informed and insightful on Russian history, I was inquiring to see if I understood him correctly.

[RichC]

Tsarfan, I recently took a new job, so I've been pretty busy.  But a few quick comments:

The 1905 revolution had very little to do with a suppressed population attempting to throw off the tyranny of the Tsarist yoke.  It did not "manifest a desire for democratic reforms."  Certainly, elements of the intelligentsia fought for "civil rights" -- but the real cause of the revolt in 1905 was basic dissatisfaction with the crappy job the government was doing running the country.  The peasants, for example were hardly interested in "civil rights".  There was a sense that the government had lost control (which it had, blundering into the war with Japan, for instance), so anarchy broke out.  

Nicholas II was an extremely intelligent but deeply flawed man.  But I believe he recognized that giving his "subjects" civil rights was a recipe for disaster.  According to General John Hanbury-Williams, Nicholas said:

"...His Majesty talked about empires and republics.  His own ideas as a young man were that he had a great responsibility and he felt that the people over whom he ruled were so numerous and so varying in blood and temperament, different altogether from our Wester Europeans, that an Emperor was a vital necessity to them.  His first visit to the Caucasus had made a vital impression on him and confirmed him in his views."

"The United States of America, he said, was an entirely different matter, and the two cases could not be compared.  In this country [Russia], many as were the problems and the difficulties, their sense of imagination, their intense religious feeling and their habits and customs generally made a crown necessary, and he believed this must be so for a very long time, that a certain amount of decentralizing of authority was, of course, necessary but that the great and decisive power must rest with the Crown.  The powers of the Duma must go slowly, because of the difficulties of pushing on education at any reasonably fast rate among all these masses of his subjects."

--quoted in Nicholas and Alexandra

There is no culture of democracy in Russia and there never has been.  (And for all of you who can't stand Alexandra, she at least recognized that -- and she was right).  

I'm going to jump ahead now and quote an interview with Anna Politkovskaya that I found online:

More dangerously she is convinced that Mr Putin has only contempt for ordinary Russians and democracy. "During the presidential pre-election campaign (this year) he behaved exactly like Stalin. He destroyed the democratic opposition, pulled the wool over people's eyes, refused to even debate and constantly lied about Chechnya and about social reforms. They say we have a happy country but we do not. It is a poor country. Putin doesn't respect people and repression will follow just as it did with Stalin."

[Elisabeth]

I have to disagree with you, RichC. Just because Russia had no native democratic tradition does not mean that by the early twentieth century it was not developing such a tradition among the educated segment of the population. The growing middle class was overwhelmingly in favor of democratic reforms. This was the very class of people that might (I stress might!) have saved Nicholas’ dynasty if he hadn’t been so shortsighted, ignoring and slighting them from the very beginning of his reign.

Nor was the Revolution of 1905 characterized solely by outbreaks of peasant anarchy in the countryside. On the contrary, the general strike which paralyzed the major cities of Russia from October 20-30, 1905, has been described as the largest general strike in history and it was carried out in a highly organized and efficient way by Russians from almost every urban socioeconomic group (including peasants, since Russian peasants provided the backbone of industrial labor and were a migratory workforce). By this time in Russian history there was already a sizeable revolutionary movement not only among Russian workers but also among students; even the professional classes and the bourgeoisie had largely come to sympathize with its aims in the face of continuing repression from the tsarist government. What the urban classes wanted first and foremost was not an end to the war with Japan but an end to autocracy itself. Indeed, this massive strike was only called off when on October 30 Nicholas issued the October Manifesto, granting all Russians civil rights and announcing the formation of an elected legislative body, the Duma. Liberals and moderates were satisfied; thus the opposition was divided and only in Moscow did the Soviet’s appeal for revolution find any response. Yes, disturbances continued in the countryside as the peasantry took advantage of the general confusion to burn down manor houses and seize land for themselves. But the revolution was successfully put down the following year because the army and the urban elites stayed loyal to the (now constitutional) tsarist government.

[RichC]

I think I said that there were elements that fought for civil rights, just like there are today.  Also, I did not say that the Revolution was characterized solely by peasant anarchy.  

Other than that, I guess we will just have disagree.  Had the revolution succeeded in toppling the Romanov dynasty in 1905, I do not believe it would have resulted in a democratic Russia.  Russia would have wound up with another dictator, just like it always has.

[Elisabeth]

I’m sorry if I misunderstood part of what you said, RichC, but I actually misstated myself when I wrote that the Revolution of 1905 was not solely characterized by outbreaks of peasant anarchy in the countryside. I should have said that it was not chiefly characterized by such outbreaks.

Needless to say I do think the democratic movement played a far larger and more important role in the Revolution of 1905 than you give it credit for. But this is not the same thing as saying that, if the Romanov dynasty had been toppled in 1905, another dictatorship could not have taken its place. I wouldn’t go so far. I do think, however, that Russia’s chances for democracy might have been a bit better in 1905 than they were over a decade later, in 1917. Russia was not fighting a world war in 1905: the country’s army and infrastructure were both still intact. The educated segments of Russian society were not as yet completely alienated from the old regime; in particular, the intelligentsia was not yet infected with that apocalyptic mood that made them believe everything of the old world had to be swept away in order for a new society to be born. The Bolshevik party was still a tiny minority socialist party among other, much bigger, better organized and more democratically minded socialist parties. I guess all I am trying to say is that the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin was not necessarily inevitable, and anyway, practically any dictatorship would have been preferable to theirs.

Nor do I think Putin was inevitable. Three-quarters of a century of Communist rule strangled Russia's infant democratic tradition in its cradle; Russians had to start over from scratch in the early 1990s. I don't think this means, however, that Russians aren't capable of achieving real democracy at some future date. Other nations without democratic traditions have shown themselves capable of such a feat.

[RichC]

He was fairly typical of the residents in the pessimism of his views; basically what he said was that Russians have no social consciousness, and consequently they have no comprehension of democratic values.

And this is exactly what Nicholas II thought.

I took this quote from the Russian Nation thread, Elisabeth.

1905 happened not because the people wanted to free themselves from Tsarist oppression, but because the Tsarist government was incompetent.  Once it was seen that the Tsar was willing to share power, as you said, enough of the pressure was off for the Crown to reestablish control.

And things went ok for about 10 years; Nicholas had some excellent ministers during that time, but the same thing happened again in March 1917.  Again, it wasn't about freedom, it was about replacing incompetent leadership and putting people in charge who knew what they were doing.